POETRY

The poet talks of being a young man, a young poet in a Beirut under siege,

Of how words were a sort of resistance, then.

I think we have too many words and not nearly enough resistance.

تحيا البدايات الجديدة

تحيا الأيام السعيدة

إلى الحياوات التي تنتظرنا

إلى الكتب التي سنقرؤها

Home is

A cozy old shoe

That sock with a hole

The smell of Friday

And slumber till noon

I have bled too many times for my brown-ness

have hidden behind too many I’m Americans

have hated myself too often for hating my ancestors

I long for a place

Where I can take off my rose-tinted glasses

And still see pink.

“I created a map

to make sense of

where I should be…”

I come from a place of empathy

where ears are made of patience,

drums sensitive to the change in wavelength,

de-weaving complexity

into simplicity.

Abu Dhabi is

the echoes of the athan downtown

helpful strangers.

two little Egyptian girls chasing each other in laughter as their tired mother watches on.

love and loneliness.

I may hate the question, “Where are you from?”

But I absolutely abhor the question, “Where are you really from?”